Di and Cam

Hi everyone

It has been a while since our last blog as not much had been happening on the travel front in the lead up to Christmas and our trip to Tignes in the French Alps. October, November and December were quiet months with winter closing in, shorter days and a busy time in London with both our birthdays (thanks everyone for the birthday messages and presents!) and work Christmas parties. Below is a picture of us at Cam's work Christmas party (mine was A LOT less glamorous!)

Having decided on a white Christmas, we (and a group of 12 others) booked onto a skiing/snowboarding tour in the French Alps with a company called 'Fanatics', based here in London. After 'umming' and 'ahhing' about the extra cost of flights, our group decided to brave the coach option and we boarded our bus for the 18 hour drive to Tignes (via Dover, the ferry, Calais and several truck stops):

The trip was long but a lot of fun and we suspect that we drove the other bus inhabitants a little crazy with the Bop-It game that Jodee and Dave gave me for my birthday (see: http://www.firebox.com/?dir=firebox&action=product&pid=159)

We arrived in Tignes (around 2pm) to find that our apartments would not be ready for us until early evening so we settled into the 'Yeti' bar and the girls were dancing on the tables by around 6pm - we were on holiday after all! We finally got hold of the keys and checked ourselves into the apartment ready for our first day of snowboarding.

- the view from our Apartment.

The following six days on the mountains were perfect - fabulous weather and a fresh dump of snow just before we arrived ensured that we were set up for carving up the learner slope! Cam and I (and several others in our group)opted for lessons, so we checked in each afternoon to learn a) how to stand up, b) how to stay standing up and c) how best to get ourselves down the mountain in one piece.

This is us (on the learner slope):

Christmas Day was kicked off with a champagne breakfast in one of the rooms and we traded presents from our Secret Santas. Then we were back on the slopes for a few runs 'in character':

Boxing Day was a slow start, not at all helped by the decision to have mid-morning cocktails, and only a few of the guys managed to get out on the slopes at all. I didn't think that one day off out of six was too bad!

The week passed really quickly but by the end Cam had conquered his snow board and managed to do a number of runs with our more experienced group members. I managed one blue (intermediate) run but we were both happy with how much we'd learnt over the week. This is us at the highest point in the resort (I didn't have the guts to snowboard down so we got the funicular train back down to mid-point and boarded down from there):

We were back on the bus back to London all too quickly, although we were tired enough to sleep most of the way to the ferry crossing despite nursing various bumps and bruises from the week's adventures!

Our next big trip is Egypt with my Mum (Heather), departure date Sunday 6 April, but I'm sure we'll be in contact again before then!

Take care of each other
Di and Cam

PS. We had planned to see in the New Year in Scotland, however one of the "bumps and bruises" belonged to our friend Dave who managed to dislocate his collar bone and tear all three of the ligaments to his shoulder, so we called off the drive to Scotland and caught the train down to Brighton instead. It's a lovely wee town and we'll definitely go back when the weather is a bit more suitable, but here are a few pictures: